Loop Gallery, in the thick of the City-designated "Art+Design" district, had an opening on Thursday. But it's also closing.

After being one of the pioneering galleries on this stretch of Queen St. W. in the early part of the decade – pre-Drake Hotel, no less – Loop's new show, of this year's crop of M.A. and PhD. graduates from York University's Fine Arts program, is its last at the current location, where the storefront galleries that helped transform the neighbourhood from downheeled urban hinterland into a theme park for condo-dwellers have been trickling out and away for several years.

It's probably no coincidence that Loop is vacating just as the Bohemian Embassy, a huge condominium development capitalizing on the fast-evaporating culture surrounding it, enters its final construction phases.

Art's role as the beneficial bacteria of urban development is nothing new. Councillor Kyle Rae a few years ago went so far as to suggest that art scenes should be on the constant move as the leading edge of a citywide civic reclamation project.

The dynamic is stunningly consistent: art moves in, real estate goes up, art moves on. Look no further than Yorkville or Queen and Spadina, former homes of vibrant art scenes that surrendered long ago to market forces, only to colonize other pockets of the city to start the process again.

Engine, DeLeon White, Fly, Greener Pastures, and Mercer Union are just a few members of the old guard to become recent departees from the Art+Design district. Watchful eyes – and no doubt, property speculators – are keeping close tabs on where they land. In the migratory patterns of the city's art scenes, there are two inevitables: First, that neighbourhoods where art makes its home become instantly more attractive; and second, because of it, art won't be at home for long. That being the case, here are a few contenders for art's next temporary home:

Dundas and Dufferin

Loop Gallery plans to reopen Sept.1 along the quietly transforming stretch of Little Portugal on Dundas St. W., which seems like the leading contender for the next significant art cluster. Spillover (or spill-up) from Queen began a few years ago, when noted gallerist Jessica Bradley opened her space with a roster of emerging artists – Shary Boyle, Derek Sullivan, Hadley + Maxwell, Luanne Martineau – that's one of the strongest in the country. Last October, the Alison Smith Gallery opened a few doors down. Following them, The Department, a multi-use gallery space run by a cultural marketing agency, opened across the street.

With long-established art space farther west – the beautiful Morrow Street former industrial complex that houses established gallerists Olga Korper, Christopher Cutts and Peak Gallery, just west of Lansdowne Ave. – and young upstarts like Le Gallery and Show+Tell trickling along Dundas from the hyper-social Ossington strip to the east, Dundas W. has all the elements of being Next – with one important difference: Bradley, Smith, and The Department all own, not rent, their buildings, making market-forced migration a lot less likely, and a permanent art presence here all the more hopeful. Bloor and Lansdowne Not quite a year ago, the venerable Mercer Union artist-run centre (as of this summer, 30 years young) decamped from the Drake-ified zone along Queen W. for the decidedly un-Drakey environs of this hardscrabble stretch of Bloor St. W., near Lansdowne Ave. The offer was too good to refuse: for about the same money, Mercer traded a nondescript warehouse cave for a turn-of-the-century movie house designed by the same architect who did Casa Loma. The space more than doubled; the rent stayed put.

Mercer had a new home, and the art world had a gorgeous new hub. A gallery called Offthemap was the original storefront pioneer, in 2003; the Toronto Free Gallery followed in 2007, and with Mercer they've attracted a host of others to the strip, such as Funktion Galleryand annhomanART, to name a couple. They've also attracted some boosterish overstatement from long-time neighbourhood activists who have been stumping for change for some time; between Dig In and Big on Bloor's annual Culture Works festival, there's a full-blown campaign meant to anoint the neighbourhood as the Next Big Thing.

Clashes have arisen over the obvious implications of such a campaign – the seemingly inevitable displacement of long-time, low-income residents, for one – and some of those clashes have taken place within the art-world arrivals themselves (Toronto Free Gallery's director, Heather Haynes, is a tireless advocate of equitable change in the neighbourhood).

Meanwhile, for the long-time art presence here, such as Garnet/Abrams, the home-cum-studio of curator/artist couple Carla Garnet and John Abrams, who have been in the area since 1979, or artist/activist Dyan Marie, striking a balance is key. But amid the strip joints (there are two) and shabby convenience stores, you can see change happening, and fast, in hip cafes and bars slowly sprouting to service the emerging gallery class; how – or if – change can happen in a way that works for everyone remains to be seen. Leslieville Art? In the east end? Blasphemy! No one can deny that the majority of serious contemporary practice in this city for at least a generation has been largely a west-end affair, but Leslieville, until the past five years or so the kind of rough 'n' ready urban wasteland that art tends to colonize, has been on the ups for a while.

Challenging, interesting contemporary work can often be found at Brayham Contemporary; Parts Gallery, which supplements its art habit with a framing business, and Pentimento Gallery round out the established presence. The lack of institutional presence, like Mercer, plus the absence of artistic pedigree, diminishes its chances, although the long-standing presence of the city's photographic community (the old warehouses in the area have long been the city's photographers' ghetto) helps. For what seems like forever, one of the best sell-lines for the neighbourhood has been modestly self-effacing: "Leslieville: Cheaper than the west end!"

But cheaper also tends to mean more diverse, more interesting – and more art. The drawback is that, with its glut of trendy restaurants and cafes, the benefit of an artistic bacterial culture may at this point be moot – too late, and despite the discount, now too pricey for a larger colony to profligate.

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